Questions remain about controversial natural gas pipeline

Plans for a new natural gas pipeline through parts of southeastern Michigan face a lot of local opposition.

A town hall meeting in Holly drew dozens of people with questions and complaints about the proposed ET Rover pipeline

Credit Steve Carmody / Michigan Radio

The ET Rover Pipeline would snake its way through more than a half dozen counties, from the Ohio border to Sarnia, Ontario. It’s part of a planned 800-mile pipeline that will stretch from Pennsylvania and West Virginia through Ohio to Michigan.

Joey Mahmoud is with Energy Transfer, a Texas-based pipeline company. He says the company’s been trying to talk with property owners.

This week, a Cheboygan District Court Judge ruled that Chesapeake Energy will go to trial for alleged fraud.

Michigan Attorney General Bill Schuette has accused the Oklahoma-based energy company of swindling landowners in northern Michigan.

Peter Payette is with our partners at Interlochen Public Radio and he has been covering this story.

How did all of this start?

Around May of 2010, the state auctioned off the right to drill for oil and gas on public land.

"And that auction saw prices that were astronomical. The state in one day raised as much money from the sale of oil and gas rights as it had raised in its entire history," Payette says. "And that's because out-of-state companies believed that by using these newer methods of horizontal hydraulic fracturing that they could make a lot of money by drilling deep down in the ground and taking out natural gas."

These companies went out to private landowners that summer and asked to explore their properties for oil and gas. The landowners signed leases. "And those promised what is called a 'order of payment' and in many cases the landowners did not receive payment and may say they were cheated and are owed money," Payette says.